AuthorTopic: Why do you think Bay12 does not need moderators? (Read 5646 times)

To have a forum of this size and complexity completely lacking any kind of administrator oversight is unheard of. On the one hand, I get that these forums are a very niche corner of the web. On the other hand, have you actually looked at the master forum index? And that's not counting the dozens of sub-forums. Besides DF, there are discussions of all other games and life philosophy. I bet if I searched, I could find a thread dedicated to what you had for dinner this weekend.

I'm sure it is a boon for Toady that he doesn't have to keep tabs on stuff here like you'd expect in any other gaming forum. Still, I'm curious about just what exactly drives the cohesion and otherwise lack of dickery. Is a hatred of elves and love of mushrooms really enough? Could this be the foundation for world peace? Now if you'll excuse me, the thoughts of food, world peace, and other games makes realize that I have some Slimes to Ranch.

When the forum needs moderating Toady comes in with a masterwork slade hammer, just to wiggle it at us and we'll behave. He's rather rapid too, ten minutes after I made a spelling mistake that made something seem wrong boom pm'd about it and post deleted. Though our love of mushroom wine likely is the reason we're so well behaved.

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Quote from: Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum

I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Places to jibber madly at each other, got it

Quote from: NJW2000

If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

Eh, I do think we need more moderators. Like you said, its anomalous for a forum this size, and I believe that the quality of moderation suffers when responsibility is stretched thin, irrespective of the moderator's own ability.

Ultimately, I think the <redacted><redacted> are just <redacted> their own <redacted>, and surely every <redacted> should <redacted><redacted> our <redacted> and <redacted> upon <redacted><redacted> like <redacted><redacted><redacted> do.

It's not a popular opinion, I know, but <redacted><redacted><redacted><redacted><redacted>-<redacted>, <redacted><redacted> (<redacted><redacted>!) <redacted><redacted><redacted><redacted> cheese on toast. And you can't tell me otherwise! Especially not in DFGeneral...

Toady moderates the forum overall. Along with the people listed as "moderators" under each sub-forum. Check out Toady's posts, most are 'cleaned up several posts, please play nice' kind of remarks.

Yes, but it would seem that it's certainly not that bad. A couple to a small handful a month. For a forum of this size, that's really rather impressive. If you go far back enough with his posts, you'll find that a good many years ago he was having to do a whole lot more moderation on the forums.

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"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."- Voltaire

Part of that is probably because stuff that happens on the forum can affect what goes into the game.

Mermaid farming comes to mind, where even the mere discussion of how to breed merfolk for killing and bonecrafting made Toady nerf the value of merbone in the game. People got the hint fast that if you get out of hand, you might just mess up the game itself in some way. Or even make Toady start rethinking releases and try looking for an outside job. Nobody wants their bad behavior to tank this project.

Other than that, I'd say we as a fandom have mellowed out. There used to be things like raids on other sites, but after a while the fandom grew up and quit that stuff. Heck, there haven't been very many comparison threads trying to elevate us above other games in a while. Last one I saw had negative reactions from the start, culminating in one of us telling Toady and getting it locked. That was overkill, but I think it sent the message that we, as a fandom, don't see ourselves as better than anyone else.

"Continue struggling, laws of physics be darned." - NRDL"What, are you stupid or something? Every one of the snake's bones is crushed! Its internal organs are torn apart! There is no way you can - (6) You resuscitate the snake."- Gatleos

Toady moderates the forum overall. Along with the people listed as "moderators" under each sub-forum. Check out Toady's posts, most are 'cleaned up several posts, please play nice' kind of remarks.

Yes, but it would seem that it's certainly not that bad. A couple to a small handful a month. For a forum of this size, that's really rather impressive. If you go far back enough with his posts, you'll find that a good many years ago he was having to do a whole lot more moderation on the forums.

I'd put that down to the few people who have been banned since then not being around anymore.

I think having just the one admin who drops from orbit like a space marine to dispense justice before returning to his life's work keeps things civil enough. There's no mod drama, because there's no mods. Rather, when drama happens, it ends quickly because a whole section of the thread just disappears without a judgement of who was right or wrong.

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Feel it pass through you. The cycle, they say.Life, death, blood. The cycle of life. No way out.Trapped, cornered, pained, bleeding. No choice now.Let them see your claws. Let them see their cycle.

I think it's because Dwarf Fortress fills a small niche, and so people on these forums are generally very much like one another -- we hardly argue and when we do we keep it civil, even in the politics threads, to a significant extent.

To be completely honest with you, there are very few people I'd trust to moderate the site. Toady has shown himself to be fair and firm when he needs to be. I remember a moderation election thread in the lower boards where it just seemed like people were trying to get themselves or their friends moderator'd for the sake of it, and I'd honestly rather keep the status quo than risk having someone who will work with a bias.

In my experience, much of the problems with moderation in other forums has to do with actual or perceived petty power struggles. If the mods are volunteers, there's a whole power struggle dynamic going on; if the mods are employees, there's a whole "rage against The Man" dynamic going on. Many forums have both.

In the case here, Toady is running a forum he personally owns, focused on a game he personally develops, and he's self-employed and answers neither to sponsors nor to publishers. He has all the power, end of story, no drama.

Since the game is free and the forum is optional, there's no reason he can't just ban people who are being a problem; it's free of the whole "people who think they are Internet lawyers who are owed something" problem.

Additionally, with personal moderation, everyone is aware that any time he has to spend moderating the forums is time not spent coding improvements to DF. The vast majority of folks who are here would consider that a problem. so the sort of "just dicking around to waste the mod's time" stuff you see elsewhere is comparatively rare (thank goodness). There's some interesting research on social compacts out there; one of the key lessons is that social compacts are more powerful than economic ones, but very fragile. See this article about day care late fees for one take on one famous study. In short, i have an uncomfortable suspicion that if the DF forums ever got to the point they were too large and complex for Toady to moderate personally, they would fairly rapidly spiral into more problematic behavior requiring even more (and more controversial) moderation.

Or, to look at it another way, enlightened dictatorship is extremely efficient. The "enlightened" part is the hard bit.